Excel User Tips

Avoid printing specific rows

In some cases, you may wish to avoid printing certain rows in your worksheet. For example, the rows may contain confidential information, or intermediate results that need not be printed.

To avoid printing specific rows, you can hide the rows before you print, and then unhide the rows after printing. If your sheet has many rows that should not be printed, hiding and unhiding the rows may be a tedious process. This tip presents a way to quickly toggle the hidden status of any number of rows. It takes advantage of Excel's Group and Outline feature.

The figure below shows a simple example. In this case, rows 5, 10, 15, and 20 should not be printed.

To set up a simple outline, follow these steps:

Select Row 5
Choose Data - Group and Outline - Group (or, use Alt+Shift+RightArrow)
Select Row 10
Press F4 (this key repeats the last command)
Select Row 15
Press F4
Select Row 20
Press F4

The preceding steps created a simple outline on the worksheet, and the outline symbols are displayed along the left side of the sheet. You can hide all of the "grouped" rows by clicking the small "1" button at the top of the outline symbol area (see the figure below).

After you've printed the sheet, click the "2" button to redisplay all of the rows.

Note: To hide the outline symbols, press Ctrl+8. The outline remains, but the symbols are hidden. To re-display the outline symbols, press Ctrl+8 again.